Ana Vidosavljevic Nonfiction

A Turkish Coffee Reader

by Ana Vidosavljevic

Grandma Lela was an elderly Serbian lady. She lived in the small town Vlasotince and was a famous Turkish coffee reader. People from all around Serbia and some foreigners came to her house every day and waited in line for her famous coffee reading and to tell them what they could expect in the future. People in Vlasotince said she was a master of interpreting symbols, coffee figures, revealing the dark secrets, predicting the future and giving advices. Rumor had it that she could even put a black magic on those who deserved this kind of ominous spell.

My mother was a good friend of Grandma Lela and she regularly drank coffee with her. Then, after drinking this famous drink in Serbia, Grandma Lela read her coffee cup, actually, interpreted the symbols found in the coffee sediment as well as those on the saucer. My mother loved this coffee reading rituals. And she was pretty good in this herself. That was what I honestly believed.

Children were not allowed to come to Grandma Lela’s sacred room for coffee reading, but seeing my curiosity for this unique skill, my mother took on the challenge of reading my coffee cup and teaching me how to do that. These daily rituals were interrupted only by my school hours and her working schedule. But somehow, we managed to drink our coffee almost every day. Mine was full of milk and sweet and her black and strong.

Soon enough, I learned what dogs, mice, rabbits, trees, flowers represented and I allowed my imagination to deviate from the interpretations established by Grandma Lela and my mother. If I saw a dog on the bottom of my coffee cup or on its walls I believed it meant I would find a puppy on the way to school and bring it home. At other times, if I saw a bunch of flowers made of coffee sediment, I thought it meant I should buy flowers for my mum and grandma that day. My mum often laughed to my interpretations and obviously loved them except the ones of adopting animals that I found on streets. But I managed to get few pets. A parrot that she agreed to buy me and which we named Charlie, a beautiful black puppy that I found and we adopted after hours of my whining and begging her, and two little kittens that someone had thrown on the public waste depot.

Later, when I grew up a bit I continued adopting animals without finding an excuse in the coffee cup signs and at one point our house resembled a small zoo. My mother always complained about all those animals but as long as I kept them outside (except the parrot and a fish tank) she didn’t really mind. However, I can blame the coffee cup reading for starting the animal adoption adventure.

And back to Grandma Lela…she was pretty famous by the time I became a teenager. And it was my big Wish, one day, Grandma Lena to read my coffee cup. And only when I was old enough to drink pure black coffee (according to her standards it was at the age of fifteen), she agreed to read my coffee cup. Well, I can’t say I was thrilled with her coffee cup reading but I do remember very well my first time. And I must admit it was intimidating.

One Monday morning, during the summer school holiday, while my mother was at work and Grandma Lela was not as busy as she usually was, since Monday morning felt like the time when people had better things to do than to visit the Turkish coffee reader, I went to Grandma Lela’s house. My mother had told me, the previous night, that Grandma Lela had invited me to come the very next morning. I opened the tall wooden gate of her house and continued to the ground floor, following the small cobble stone path. Once I was in front of the door of her house, I knocked timidly since there was no bell I could ring. Silence was strange and unusual for this place that usually swarmed with people. Therefore, Grandma Lela asked me to come in. She didn’t open the door, she just yelled loudly: “Come in!” The room where she accepted guests was not very spacious, and the air was stale. I could smell something rancid, some strange smell of moth balls mixed with lavender fragrance. It indicated that this room was old and not very well maintained. Grandma Lela had never got married. She didn’t have children. She didn’t have a maid to help her clean the house. She lived alone.

When I entered the room, I saw her sitting in the chair at the small table with the glass vase and few wilted, dying flowers in it. She had a scarf around her head. It covered her forehead and was tied off in the lower back of her head, the way Gypsy women used to wear it, even though Grandma Lela was not a Gypsy. Her hair was white and face wrinkled, but her eyes were watery blue and clear like those of babies. They seemed the friendliest part of her face and they invited me to come closer and sit in a chair opposite her. I obeyed.

She had already prepared two cups of black Turkish coffee, but there was no steam coming out of the cups, so I guessed they might have been prepared much earlier and were getting cold. I touched my cup and I was right. The cup was not hot. It was still warm though.

Grandma Lela gestured me to drink coffee as if rushing me into finishing fast my part of the role in this play called Turkish Coffee Cup Reading. There was something scary and unpleasant in her way of communicating with me and in her attitude of speeding up the process of drinking coffee which was usually and naturally done with no rush but with slow pleasure instead. I followed compliantly her instructions and drank my very sweet and mild coffee almost in one gulp. Then, I followed Grandma Lela’s example and placed the saucer over the cup (face on) and covered it. Soon after, I made few horizontal circles clockwise with the intention to move the sediment around the cup and evenly spread it around the inside of the cup. Then, I turned the coffee cup upside down with a quick movement and passed it to Grandma Lela. She didn’t take it immediately. Instead, she let it there on the table in front of her for five minutes and made a small talk with me. She asked me about school, friends and other, for me, not very relevant things. After five minutes of our small talk, she overturned my cup and held it upright. And she started reading it, interpreting the symbols she saw and making the whole story of my past, present and future. Since she knew me very well and my family in general, it was not hard for her to tell my past events as well as those of the present. They didn’t bother me or made me feel uncomfortable. But the ones from the future seemed terrifying.

Among other things, she told me that I would finish high school and enroll the university which I would probably never finish. I would get married and have two children but my marriage would end up in divorce. I would meet some other man, after the divorce, who would be the real love of my life and with whom I would spend the rest of my life. Grandma Lela didn’t mention what would happen with my children and if they would live with me or their biological father. However, after finishing the story, or better the prediction of my love life, she focused on my health. I was already pretty sad with what I had heard by then and was not happy to proceed listening to what type of bad illness would fall upon me, but I couldn’t stop her. She told me that until my thirties, I would be pretty healthy. But then, I would have some awkward leg injury that would lead to dry gangrene and I would have two operations. Doctors would save my leg but I would always have problems walking and I would be obliged to use a walking cane until the rest of my life.

After hearing all these things, I was so desperate and terrified that I almost started crying. I couldn’t listen anymore but I remained sitting in the chair my eyes fixed on the black spot in the wall. These were not those naïve coffee cup readings with my mum. I didn’t smile and I didn’t laugh. My mother and I enjoyed our lighthearted and funny interpretations of the coffee sediment symbols which never got very serious. Grandma Lela’s coffee cup reading resembled the dark ominous and menacing scenes from horror movies that suggested that something even worse and scarier would happen with every new scene. I didn’t enjoy and didn’t like it. Quite the opposite, it was repulsive and intimidating and left the bad taste in my mouth.

Grandma Lela didn’t have a pricelist for her coffee cup reading services, and people usually left as much or as little money as they wanted. That day, after she finished reading my coffee cup, I forgot to leave her some money. I know it was rude but I was so shocked and dismayed by what I had heard from her that I just left her house without even saying “thank you”. I’m sure my mother later gave her some money but it was pretty rude to leave just like that without even saying a word.

When my mother came back from work and asked me how the coffee reading was, I just mumbled “fine” and avoided the topic. No matter how much I wanted to tell my mother about everything and take comfort in her hugs and words “oh, don’t worry. That is just a stupid future telling that has nothing to do with the reality”, I didn’t want her to get upset, or angry with Grandma Lela and to lose her own interest in the coffee cup reading. But I hoped all those things Grandma Lela had told me were incorrect. Honestly, I was a bit worried and scared. But after some days I stopped thinking about my unfortunate future. Anyway, that was the only time Grandma Lela read my coffee cup.

Of course, years went by and Grandma Lela’s predictions proved wrong. Thanks to my lucky stars! But the whole event remained in my memory. I always avoided talking about her with my mother and I started abhorring all the coffee cup readers, fortune tellers, palm readers, dream interpreters, phrenologists and numerologists. I didn’t want to hear what would happen in the future and I, especially, didn’t want to hear bad news. Of course, once I became an adult I didn’t believe in things those kind of prophets said but I also didn’t want them to provoke some unpleasant thoughts. I didn’t want some strange sinister thoughts to ramble around my brain because those thoughts were dangerous. “What we think we become.” Buddha said. And I can’t agree more.

However, my mother and I continued our funny coffee reading rituals and even though we don’t see each other that often nowadays, often, when we meet and drink coffee, we read and interpret those symbols we find in the coffee sediment. I adore these Turkish coffee cup reading rituals. And I must admit my mother is the best Turkish coffee cup reader in the whole world. She will make you not only smile and laugh but she will inspire you to find the bright side of every situation and to be more positive about the future.

BIO

Ana Vidosavljevic from Serbia currently living in Indonesia. She has her work published or forthcoming in Down in the Dirt (Scar Publications), Literary Yard, RYL (Refresh Your Life), The Caterpillar, The Curlew, Eskimo Pie, Coldnoon, Perspectives, Indiana Voice Journal, The Raven Chronicles, Setu Bilingual Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Madcap Review, The Bookends Review, Gimmick Press, (mac)ro(mic), Scarlet Leaf Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, A New Ulster. She worked on a GIEE 2011 project: Gender and Interdisciplinary Education for Engineers 2011 as a member of the Institute Mihailo Pupin team. She also attended the International Conference “Bullying and Abuse of Power” in November, 2010, in Prague, Czech Republic, where she presented her paper: “Cultural intolerance”.